


Make Much of Me

by emei



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, Kissing, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-17
Updated: 2009-10-17
Packaged: 2017-11-04 01:42:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/388276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emei/pseuds/emei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gwen and Morgana in a library, reading Christina Rosetti's The Goblin Market.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make Much of Me

Gwen is perfectly fine with libraries. Really. A library is a good place to study. Especially this one, with old vaulted ceilings over the rows and rows of old books bound in faded leather, and plenty of nooks and crannies with tables to sit at. It’s the oldest part of the library, the one Morgana prefers, where there are a few lit students who look like they could blend seamlessly with their favourite classics, and the occasional old man in a suit from decades past. If smoking wasn’t strictly forbidden in here, Gwen is sure he’d be puffing on a pipe.

And then there’s the two of them, opposite one another at an almost hidden away table, books and notebooks covering the tabletop and piled up next to it. Morgana is researching an essay Gwen doubts she needs to write. It’s an attempt to deconstruct gender roles in the poetry canon, and there is no way Morgana’s course requires her to do that, and even though they could’ve been having a picnic in the sun now otherwise, Gwen isn’t complaining. Morgana will read her the essay when she’s satisfied with it, probably late in the evening, sitting on the couch in their living room with Gwen’s head on her lap.

Morgana is kind of glorious when she’s political and angry. Gwen sometimes feels the need to point out that other people are still people and not pigs even if they’re being dumb, okay, enough with the demonizing, but mostly she listens and marvels. She calls Morgana her very own revolutionary and kisses the ferocity of her tongue, laps it up from her lips.

Fierce, Gwen thinks, is a good word for Morgana’s expression as she falls over a phrase that must anger her. She twists her hair up and sticks a pen through it. The rustle of pages is the only sound until Gwen sighs at her methodology textbook that’s been open on the same page for fifteen minutes. (She still doesn’t know what it says.)

Gwen is fine with libraries. This one in particular has atmosphere, and is calm, and provides a lot of peace for studying. It’s only that she’s been thinking increasingly dirty things for the last half-an-hour or so. The way Morgana’s mouth quirks when she’s come up with a snappy way to tear an old text to pieces is positively indecent.

Morgana looks up, smiles. “You’re getting bored, aren’t you?”  
Gwen shrugs. “A little restless.” She toed her shoes off a while ago, and now she runs her foot up Morgana’s calf, tickling the back of her knee with her toes. Morgana’s smile broadens.

“Let me read you something,” she says, and gets up to fetch another book. Gwen watches her disappear among the shelves, hair swinging over her shoulders with every long, quiet step. She goes back to the sketch in the margin of her notebook, adding a detail here and there to the armour she’s been doodling.

Morgana places a heavy anthology on top of her work in progress and leafs through it. “For you, my Gwen, The Goblin Market. It reminds me of you.”  
Gwen has read it, long ago, but this is different, with the changing rhythm and timbre of Morgana’s voice (pitched low not to disturb others) making each phrase reverberate in her. When Morgana lifts her eyes to Gwen’s in between verses, Gwen thinks that there is no way they’re staying here once Morgana is done reading. Too quiet, too public.

And then Morgana lowers her voice even more, soft and a little husky, and reads:

”Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices   
Squeezed from goblin fruits for you,  
Goblin pulp and goblin dew.   
Eat me, drink me, love me;   
Laura, make much of me:  
For your sake I have braved the glen -”

Library manners be damned. Gwen leans over the table and pulls Morgana in with her hands, fingers tangling in her hair, and kisses her fiercely. When she stops to breathe Morgana laughs, low, and says: “All right, all right, we’re going.”

But first she reads the rest of the poem. And when Gwen pushes her down on their bed later, it’s with hours of contemplating Morgana guiding her hands, and a slow burning from words making them move faster. They need no goblin fruits, they make much of each other. Gwen licks poetry of Morgana’s mouth in their kisses.


End file.
